Books

Most Geoscientists and Engineers are Global Warming skeptics

When researchers Lianne M. Lefsrud and Renate E. Meyer asked geoscientists and engineers their opinion about global warming, they discovered that two thirds of them think that the current warming is mostly due to nature.

They also found out that skeptics are scientifically informed and in positions of power and influence. What they didn’t figure out is why this is bleedingly obvious once you start with correct assumptions. Even though the skepticism of well respected scientists matches the skepticism of meteorologists (think about that) the researchers assume the skeptics are “deniers”.

Of course, polls of scientists are not evidence about our climate. But it is evidence that one of the main forms of argument “97% of climate scientists say man-made warming is real” is not just meaningless, but misleading. It’s PR, not science. The endorsement of “science associations” is one of the main points of “evidence” offered by pro-carbon-market activists. But few of those associations ever asked their members, their endorsement is usually just a committee pronouncement from six networking types on the “climate policy” committee. And few researchers even ask “most scientists” what they think. The one large survey was done by volunteers (and done twice) and they found 31,000 scientists who disagree with the six-member-committees of science associations.

Survey: Geoscientists, Engineers Are Global Warming Skeptics

Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. Nearly two-thirds of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.

The survey results show geoscientists and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists. Two recent surveys of meteorologists (summarized here and here) revealed similar skepticism of alarmist global warming claims.

The researchers start in the darkness and never find the light

Not to pull punches, this study, like so many, was done by researchers who don’t seem to know what science is, don’t test their base assumptions, and unwittingly build their own mental-contructs around activist PR, mistaking it for “scientific truth”. They use the wholly unscientific and undefinable term “climate change deniers” even though they admit no one seems to deny that the climate changes. If a researcher can’t start with accurate English, what’s left? Namecalling — it’s not a good look for a scientific mind. Couldn’t the researchers see “deniers” for what it is — the bullying and intimidation by people who don’t have better arguments?

The research appears to come from the point of view of trying to figure out how to convert those pesky inconvenient skeptics. Look out for two new junkscience terms “Climate change resistance” and “institutional defence”.

One of the biggest flaws is that Lefsrud and Meyer assume that fossil fuel scientists have a vested interest, but think no one else does:

For obvious reasons, fossil fuel industries’ stakes in this struggle are high and, not surprisingly, they are at the forefront of the opposition to carbon regulation (Wittneben, Okereke, Banerjee, & Levy, 2009).

Did no one wonder what happens to a climate change expert if it turns out that (a) climate change is natural and there is no need to spend billions to try to control the weather (or fund large grants to study it), and (b) the climate scientists were mostly wrong, barking up the wrong tree and not very good at their jobs?

The influence of the vested interests in fossil fuel related work is real but not particular strong. The stakes are not that high. Fossil-fuel-based-scientists know that even if CO2 causes a significant climate shift, it won’t cripple their industry. For the foreseeable future people will still be buying coal, oil and gas because there are no real alternatives (apart from nukes).

For climate scientists, the stakes are all or nothing. If CO2 is not a big problem, many careers will crash. Did the researchers ask the geo’s their opinion on wind and solar, and the likelihood it would threaten their jobs?

Lefsrud and Meyer reckon it’s hard to “gain access” to the minds of deniers:

Crikey, this is their research question? No wonder they don’t find anything useful:

How do professional experts use frames to construct the reality of climate change, and themselves as experts, their credibility in making recommendations and decisions, while engaging in defensive institutional work against others?

They have a strange way of defining expertise:

Expertise, as we have pointed out, relies on credibility and has to demonstrate ‘informedness’ and objectivity of judgment.

In science, expertise is the ability to make predictions that match what happens. Credibility is what happens after someone proves they can do that. Derision is what happens when someone who pretends to have credibility keeps getting it wrong.

They found that skeptics are not scientifically illiterate… and strangely have some influence:

Third, we show that the consensus of IPCC experts meets a much larger, and again heterogenous, sceptical group of experts in the relevant industries and organizations (at least in Alberta) than is generally assumed. We find that climate science scepticism is not limited to the scientifically illiterate (perHoffman, 2011a), but well ensconced within this group of professional experts with scientific training – who work as leaders or advisors to management in governmental, non-governmental, and corporate organizations.

No wait, fossil fuel type scientists are motivated by money and the status quo:

…we find that professional experts employed in the petroleum industry are more likely to be sceptical of the IPCC and of anthropogenic climate change. Given this, the defensive institutional work of these professionals to maintain existing institutions clearly exceeds the mere maintenance of ‘routines and rituals of their reproduction’…

But bankers can rise above…. oh ha-de-ha…

Marquis and Lounsbury (2007) suggest that banking professionals are more able to resist due to their stronger professional identity; Jonsson (2009) finds that professional resistance differs across firms, depending upon the relative influence of professionals and the logics associated.

The assumptions that make their conclusions like a stumble-through-a-dark-swamp (sorry) are that climate scientists have no “vested interest” and are therefore right about climate science.

Does that mean people who are resisting actual climate change (ie. resisting the artificial warming of the planet) or people who are resisting the dominant belief and propaganda? (I assume it’s the latter). Sloppy language does not engender accurate thinking.

At least they did manage to figure out what skeptics are on about in a vague kind of way:

The vast majority of these professional experts believe that the climate is changing; it is the cause, the severity and the urgency of the problem, and the need to take action, especially the efficacy of regulation, that is at issue.

But they still think their research provides more info on the nuances of “institutional defense”. What they have stumbled onto and have no idea, is that their research shows that most scientists have reasonable judgement and that using a poll of one small specialist group of scientists is a poor way to determine the policy of western civilization, especially when those scientists can’t name any observational evidence to support their faith.

Skeptics have risen higher in management

Watch how researchers working on the wrong base-assumptions fall into obvious traps:

… our results indicate that those who are more defensive occupy more senior organizational positions and are much closer to decision-making than activists.

They make it sound like it was an accident of hierarchy. Could be that those who are more rational about other things have risen up to be in senior organizational positions because they are capable, bright, and sensible? They make better decisions than activists, perhaps?

Is being sexist and ageist a useful tool?

This can only partly be explained by adherents of defensive framings being older and more likely to be male compared to activists.

If they had written that activists were more likely to be female and young (and less likely to be right because of that) would that be OK? The idea that young people might be more gullible and less wise is hardly radical, but these researchers seem to think that humans are naturally wiser when they’re younger, but lose it as they gain experience. Barking.

Vested interests are everywhere

The researchers seem to have the view that only the fossil fuel industry has an “interest” in the outcome of legislation aimed at controlling the weather. Blinded by their own assumption that the “Consensus” is right they are oblivious to the interests of groups like insurers, bankers, and climate scientists. They spend paragraphs discussing how the intransigence of geoscientists is a problem to be solved, then write as if the insurance industry and military is run purely by philanthropists.

Yet this dissension, declining public interest, and political intransigence may be immaterial. A potential, yet so far unused discursive opportunity to ‘broker’ between pro-regulation frames and ‘economic responsibility’ may lie in a more comprehensive (i.e., including financial) understanding of risk (Hoffman, 2011b). Nagel (2011) discusses how the insurance and reinsurance industry is supremely concerned about exposure to financial risks associated with extreme weather events. The US military is concerned about security risks associated with ‘population displacements, increased potential for failed states and terrorism, potential escalation of conflicts over resources’ (Nagel, 2011, p. 206).

I’m sure the reinsurance guys never noticed they’d sell more insurance if the population was scared of floods washing away their homes or droughts destroying their crops. What’s the best kind of insurance deal for the insurance industry? One where the public worries about something that doesn’t happen. Ka-ching. Ka-ching. Thanks for the money.

Likewise the military wouldn’t be asking for more funds to deal with “population displacements” would they? Surely not!

Lefsrud and Meyer need to start again, and with a different mental model

Everything they write hinges on the question “Do we need to try changing the weather?”. The answer to that question lies in the evidence from instruments that measure the climate. Surveys of experts will never tell us what’s happening to clouds or ocean currents, they can only tell us what’s happening in the culture and counter culture of a politically hot-potato topic. When it comes to pricing something as universal as energy, everyone and every industry has something to gain or lose.

If governments had mistakenly funded one side of research in a monopoly to find a crisis, is anyone surprised that mostly honest researchers would find one? If journalists got swept up in a dominant culture that rewarded them as saints if they sound the alarm, but called them nasty petty names like “denier” if they pointed out the flaws, is anyone surprised that the media is slow to point out obvious discrepancies? If social scientists without proper science training mistakenly think that “science” is decided by opinions rather than data, they merely propagate the pool of pointless research, and add to global confusion.

If the US government had poured in say, $79 billion, to find a crisis, while Fossil Fuel funds had only contributed $23 million, and the media did not expose the massive one sided imbalance or the flawed evidence from faulty climate models, the opinions of thousands of independent scientists could be the clarion call of informed whistleblowers. It is exactly what we would expect if the evidence was strongly pointing to a minor role for CO2, but the climate industry denied this. These social science researchers miss the point (and the mass uprising of volunteers) and dismiss the whistleblowers because they assume the peer reviewed process in science can work normally when billions of dollars is on one table, and virtually nothing is on the other.

259 comments to Most Geoscientists and Engineers are Global Warming skeptics

The only tool available to prove to the alarmists that they are wrong is time. Unfortunately, the more time it takes for them to realise that Gaia has been having a joke at their expense, the more time they will have to totally screw the west’s economy.

While time will prove the warmists wrong, it is not the only tool available. Science and the Internet will work as well. How often have we heard “its basic physics” and “settled science”? The truth is that the AGW pseudo scientists got the “basic physics” totally wrong. When claiming a radiative “green house effect”, they had not modelled the atmosphere correctly. They did not correctly model an atmosphere with depth in a gravity field and with moving gases. They never correctly modelled the role of radiative gases in convective circulation below the tropopause and they never correctly modelled the role of convection in energy transport in the atmosphere.

Here is a quick list of the “Do Nots” of atmospheric modelling that the AGW pseudo science have used to get the “politically correct” but scientifically wrong answer -

1. Do not model the “earth” as a combined land/ocean/gas “thingy”
2. Do not model the atmosphere as a single body or layer
3. Do not model the sun as a ¼ power constant source without diurnal cycle
4. Do not model conductive flux to and from the surface and atmosphere based on surface Tav
5. Do not model a static atmosphere without moving gases
6. Do not model a moving atmosphere without Gravity
7. Do not model the surface as a combined land/ocean “thingy”

Avoid the “Do Nots” and you will find the true role of radiative gases in the atmosphere. You will find that -

- Almost all the radiative gases in our atmosphere exist below the tropopause.
- Almost all vertical convective circulation occurs below the tropopause.
- Radiative gases allow energy loss at altitude which is critical for continued convective circulation.
- If convective circulation stalls or stagnates, our atmosphere heats.
- Adding radiative gases to the atmosphere will not reduce the atmosphere’s radiative cooling ability.
- The net effect of radiative gases is to cool the atmosphere at all concentrations above 0.0ppm.
- AGW as a result of CO2 emissions is a physical impossibility.

The AGW pseudo scientists have not just gotten the magnitude of CO2s effects wrong, they have gotten the actually sign of its effect wrong. The almost unbearably delicious part of this is that the Internet will preserve the record of their flawed modelling forever. They can never go back and rewrite history and claim they correctly modelled the role of radiative gases in convective circulation in the troposphere.

Time will defeat the AGW hoax, but spreading the word that the pseudo scientists never modelled the role of radiative gases in tropospheric convective circulation will speed the end of the hoax.

No mate that wont work. We are already seeing how a generation of new spawn has reached voting age who actually believe there was no bad weather before man broke the planet. There is no way evidence or anything factual will ever defeat this ideology. Either we wait until this fagged out, pathetic society (Western idiocracy) has finally been buried by the sensible folk of China and India (I regard them as the inheritors of everything good the West achieved) or some nasty shit is going to have to hit the fan.

Climate Scientists Not Credible on.. Climate
Two thirds of geologists don’t belief; that’s a far far cry from the “97%” of Climate “Scientists” that say they believe agw. Look, as has been said repeatedly, post 1990 vintage Climate Scientists, in order to get admitted into their doctoral programs, had to agree with the “science” and political goals of the Chicken Littlesd. No joke. So, climate scientists are simply not credible on the issue of … climate. They are in effect political propagandists, not scientists. Proof is in the pudding (quotes):
“We have to offer up [fabricated & false] scary scenarios… each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective [lying] and being honest [ineffective].” -Stephen Schneider, lead ipcc author, 1989
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” -Paul Watson, Greenpeace

Thanks for not clarifying Dave. You shouted ‘liar liar’ but can’t tell me what the lie is. I can ignore you in future. Feel free to send more Star Trek links my way though, I like those.

But since I’m already engaged, let’s go back to your original quote: “The Victorian newspaper reported a computer user in Parliament House had pretended to be at least nine different people.” That’s one schizo computer. Smart, though. We need to watch out for computers impersonating people.

The point of “find out for yourself” is my defence, a defence which could be used often by others in the hope that the message gets through, against the many instances when, instead of making a point, a response to a comment is a barrage of questions. Asking someone in a debate to answer a bunch of questions that are easily answered elsewhere is not debating at all.

The facepalm is a similar solution, “oh gawd, you asked me that … why”.

Dave, please use these techniques wisely and often but so not cry wolf.

Even if I took this new knowledge to a warmista blog, I would still be wantonly abused and called a denier. Even after a decade of heavy winter snow in both hemispheres they remain determined to push ahead with the delusional construct of ‘carbon pollution’.

Fascinating stuff this mass propaganda and if George Orwell was alive I’m sure he would agree.

Fact check Gordo: it snows more when temperatures are -5 Celsius than when they are -50. Most, if not all, of Antarctica is a desert – it doesn’t get much precipitation at all. I’m pretty sure I said this already on this thread but: higher temps = more moisture = more precipitation. Apologies to the spectators who are getting sick of me. I’m just trying to correct misapprehensions.

You’re probably right about the abuse though. There’s a lot of it around. And yep, Orwell would be astonished at how eagerly we’ve embraced 24/7 digital surveillance, doublespeak and constant war against ‘the other’. What’s in your Room 13? A continuous loop of “An Inconvenient Truth” and a pile of scientific literature?

1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?

This survey says

Nearly two-thirds of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.

They do not asked the same thing. You can accept the earth has warmed since 1800; that human activity is significant; that the primary cause of the recent warming is natural; AND that future warming is not a very serious problem. A climatologist might believe that 10-20% of recent warming was anthropogenic significant and a subject worthy of study.

Good point MBC, but the “97%” figure is out of date. A study carried out last year showed 24 of 13,950 peer-reviewed articles published between 1990 and 2012 said global warming wasn’t happening. So that 99.8% of published peer-reviewed papers over the past 22 years which agree the earth is warming. Now, what’s causing that warming?
I think it’s the Greenpeace Weather Death Ray they smuggled on board the Space Shuttle a couple of decades ago. A bloke down the pub told me they can point it wherever they want – north America, Australia, Europe, back to north America – to cause all the extreme weather events we’ve been having.

Not I believe in Gaia but I’m sure I’ll be able to score with a shirt like that

And I stated

Not only are you illiterate but a sexist pig!

So apologise to Andy 3 times.

1. For getting the person who made this statement wrong. Lying again. Apologise to AndyG55
2. For stated: Whats SkS? You know Dana! Lying again.
3. For not replying to the accusations as I quoted above. Denier.

They are nothing like the protracted heat waves we used to have because we now have air conditioning! Without air con, yesterday would have been a bit of a nightmare. With air con, I spent a comfortable day.

When I was a kid, we had no air con. On days like today, we’d shut up the house at 7am, close all the windows and curtains, and wait for the sea breeze to arrive.

I have no air con. For sure, the post 2006 climate in my region has been cooler. We had no heatwaves after Feb 2004 till Jan 2013. Nine years without a heatwave, and the coolest summer (2011-12) in anybody’s memory – at 32 latitude I didn’t even need a fan.

It’s just the PDO, or some such thing that nobody knows much about but many will pretend to know about. It too will pass. But when trillions are being frittered on the biggest single scam in history, you are bound to get a few experts in things uncomprehended. If those things were comprehended, the experts would not be free to make any ludicrous claims they like. Handy that.

The same technique as per the 1960′s works today in houses that are sensibly constructed; unlike the architectural effluent of “Meditteranean” boxes that are fashinable nowadays.

My 1968-build house has no windows on its East or West faces and wide eaves. That’s a “solar design”. Partly out of luck because the road runs East-West.

The reason that I installed an airconditioner was because I have one room in which there are computers running, around the clock; and unless I actually want them dead in less than 3 years, it’s best to keep the ambient temperature below 30⁰C … the thermostat is typically set at 26⁰C because the “hot spot” in the room is 2 degrees warmer.

When I go “to” the beach on a hot afternoon, I also notice that it’s as far as it was in 1968. To get to the water is even further because of the snake havens created by those who try to arrest the dunes.

Oh dear, they want to remove climate propaganda from the school syllabus, and bring back proper evidenciary based science.. (that would just kill the climate scientists, and the far-left wingers socialists like Bloomberg.)

And I don’t think I saw the words criminal charges or gaol time mentioned anywhere in that loony left-wing article to do with the Koch brothers.

and yep, Muller fooled a few people with his faulse skeptic lies. (or rather his rabid AGW daughter did)

Andy 4.1.2.1.6: you realise that the situation I describe (and you appear to accept), allowing corporations with vested interests to define how we learn about the basic science which impacts on their bottom line, is akin to allowing McDonalds to teach nutrition? It’s the same process whereby “intelligent design” was shoehorned into the curriculum in southern US states, and practiced by some of the same people.

Koch Industries has paid $400m in fines for dodgy corporate practices. If your definition of a ‘bad man’ is someone who does time, what does that make Nelson Mandela? I’m pretty sure you could come up with your own list of ‘bad people’ who haven’t been to jail. Mine would include the top echelons of Goldman Sachs, and ratings agencies Moody’s, Fitch and S&P. Lots of fines there, congressional inquiries, no jail time. I’d also include a certain media proprietor who oversaw the hacking of a multitude of phones and computers, and the bribing of public officials.

What makes Muller a “false skeptic”? Think carefully. John Maynard Keynes once said: “when the facts change, I change my mind”. To me, that is the credo of a sceptic. (That’s Australian spelling, in case you’re wondering.)

Andy 4.1.2.1.8: “NO CORRELATION between CO2 and temperatures” except when there was. Fabulous, darling. Perhaps you mean “every decade in the last 120 years has been hotter than the one before except for one (the 1940s? 1950s? I forget) and we’ve seen a 0.8 degree rise in average temps since 1880.”

Your crack about union officials, although fantasy, illustrates the point made in the study Jo dissed at the start of this thread.

The two-thirds majority of ‘skeptics’ was a sample of 1,077 engineers working in the Canadian oil industry and related fields. Hardly a random sample. That’s something that probably should have been mentioned at some point in the article.

The point is: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Thanks to Upton Sinclair for that thought.

“DeSmog was founded with $300,000 from its chief benefactor John Lefebvre. Lefebvre is a convicted Internet fraudster currently out on bail awaiting conviction after pleading guilty in the NETeller multi-million dollar online pay system scam.”

The blog that created the Fakegate story, only to have it blow up in their faces when skeptics fingered Peter Gleick as the culprit, forcing him to admit that he’d been the one to steal the documents from Heartland.

They are a RABID CAGW collaborator site, very similar in misinformation to SkS.

Interesting that one person reviewed the 13,950 papers which included only 24 papers skeptical of CAGW over an extended period. Mother Jones who got the faction right has this to say.

“The chart comes from James Lawrence Powell, a geologist, science-writer, and former professor, via DeSmogBlog. Powell reviewed 13,950 peer-reviewed scientific articles published between January 1991 and November 9, 2012 that mentioned “global warming” or “global climate change.” The grand total of articles that questioned global warming or whether rising emissions are the cause: 24. That’s 0.17 percent of all the literature on the topic.”

Ha Ha Ha brilliant. Only a fool could possibly believe those stats by one alarmist reviewer over a period of about 20 years mean anything. Anyway there is a nice graphic on the site for those who can’t see the funny side of this troll’s endeavours to appear rational.

When I was young in the fifties they blamed “all this extreme weather we were having” on nuclear tests. Remember when a lake the size of England and Wales formed to Sydney’s West as a result of the Maitland Flood? It was those A bombs they were letting off.

When we had Sydney’s worst heatwave in 1960 people were more sophisticated. Remember “all that extreme weather we were having” back when Crash Craddock was booming? They were sure it was sputnik.

Cranks have one piece of colossal luck, right down the ages. We are always having “all this extreme weather lately”.

A vast majority of sceptics agree that the world is warming, but dispute the severity, speed and cause.

Are we going to fry & die or will the warming be net beneficial?
Is it going to warm rapidly (0.3 to 0.6 deg/decade) or is it going to warm at the same rate as the last 16 years (0.03 deg/decade)?
What caused the warming? Is it natural variation or man made? Is it both? In what proportion?
Do we know enough about this non-linear chatoic climate system to predict anything?

It would be interesting to review those 13,950 peer-reviewed articles and categorise them more appropriately. I would like to see the percentage of the same studies which provide actual evidence that we are going to “fry & die” by 2100. I am tipping that particular percentage would be quite low, a lot less than 24 of 13,950.

There are wide ranging opinions and theories, and you can claim “consensus” (as most warmists do) as much as you like, but it only takes one piece of empirical evidence to destroy a hypothesis and at the moment, the empirical evidence is a little more compelling than the GIGO computer models.

It would be useful to have the reference. My point is that the “97% of climate scientists” survey asked trivial questions. There are two things you should look for in your new survey.
1. What is the criteria?
2. Does it account for the funding issue? That is, a journal will not publish an article that might be viewed in any way critical of the CAGW paradigm unless it includes a comment like:-

“The conclusions of this paper in no way effect the opinion of consensus of climate scientists that sea levels will rise by 1000 metres during the worst drought and snow blizzard since last Christmas, unless I change to energy efficient light bulbs and stop eating beans by a week on Wednesday.”

P.S. There is a reason for my handle – but you should recognize that surveys can be a tad biased to generate the desired conclusion, like Lewandowsky et. al 2012.

From your replies, are we to assume that the following statement you made is untrue?

A study carried out last year showed 24 of 13,950 peer-reviewed articles published between 1990 and 2012 said global warming wasn’t happening. So that 99.8% of published peer-reviewed papers over the past 22 years which agree the earth is warming.

I have never heard of this study. Can you please provide the reference.

As a geologist and hard core sceptic, I am pleased to say every geologist I know believes CAGW is a figment of the imagination of a motley collection of dodgy politicians, third rate scientists and pointless, overpaid bureaucrats.

However, most geoscientists believe there is probably a very modest amount of AGW, enough to be classified as a mildly interesting phenomenon, but absolutely nothing to get excited about.

Of course, alarmists do not like the widespread scepticism of engineers and geoscientists; these are economically useful people, unlike the economic parasites, which infest the alarmist ranks.

As a metallurgist for whom the study of combustion and CO2 was bread and butter I can see just a slight change perhaps being needed to your comment.

Quantification of all effects suggests that your concession that “there is probably a very modest amount of AGW, enough to be classified as a mildly interesting phenomenon” might need adjustment.

Human activity does seem to be overwhelming but when assessed scientifically in concert with what nature is doing on a global scale it is a joke.

It is in reality Non Existent.

Now I hate to say that the efforts of humanity are a joke, but it’s no joke.

Any heating effect is not from CO2 ‘

The only heat is from the actual combustion of fossil fuels and it will quickly end up in space unless the atmosphere can hold it for a little while.

The Earth is bathed in two important effects:

1. The sun, lots of heat – when it’s dark it gets cold. just imagine what the next day would be like if the sun NEVER came up again: Bloody Cold and then colder.

2. The place we know as space with a background temp of about 1.6 degrees C over absolute zero. The greatest heat sink you could imagine: it will suck any energy it can out of our planet.

Klimate Scientists do not consider any of this in their work; it goes in the too hard basket or maybe they aren’t even aware.

The only reason that the CAGW scam was able to last so long is that scientists wrongly assumed that the claims had all been checked out and that The Other Scientists making the claims were honest and like themselves, true scientists.

The biggest and most scandalous Joke was the Obama EPA mob demonizing Carbon Dioxide as a dangerous pollutant.

To people with scientific education it is absolutely outrageous that Americans are told by their Government the CO2 is Dangerous.

Another feather in the cap of the American Drug administration is the exposure of Lance Armstrong.

What a puerile victory by some high school mediocre athlete who wanted to make a name for himself.

Of course we now know that Lance was the ONLY cyclist in the entire history of the Tour de France and now that they have rooted him out all will be pure and good and gentle for evermore.

Not to be outdone the local political mafia have suddenly found, in the lead up to the election, that Australian sports is riddled with doping.

Apparently they didn’t notice the size of the bodies on the football players and thought they were all just normal.

Point is that Politics is a crude, blunt instrument and unscientific and it will NEVER be a substitute for Real Science.

My background is in Mining Geology (though not fossil fuel) and as such Metallurgists and Engineers are some of my favourite people. (No KK, I’m not being tongue in cheek here, when I was a graduate I spent time working in the metallurgy dept of a gold mine and it was excellent)

There has been mention elsewhere that geologists involved in the fossil fuel industry are more likely to be sceptical.

I expect that the inclusion of geophysicists and those geologists who have had exposure to geostatistics in the fossil fuel industry (similar to mining industry in general) and that they are in a higher proportion than in your garden variety geology prfessions should account for that correlation.

I do not however have enough data at the moment to work out if the correlation is significant, perhaps a survey through the professional bodies could shed some light.

And of course I’m sceptical: when the IPCC is politically controlled to produce a specific answer and the statistics involved are dodgy at the best, it leads to a lot of questions that are not easily answered. And when there are no clear answers, just rhetoric and spin saying “Of course there is a problem, because we say so”, then I get really suspicious.

… our results indicate that those who are more defensive occupy more senior organizational positions and are much closer to decision-making than activists.

Maybe the authors could consider an alternative hypothesis to age and gender. Those who attain decision-making positions tend to be those who can ask the pertinent questions, analyse issues and make up their own minds. Or at least this is the case in industry.

Exactly John. And since “the boat” is the western governments who’ve named the ship “man-made Global Warming” that’s the reason so many people who think the theory is junk don’t speak against the media, the UN, academia, government departments, and the campaign bullying and namecalling.

It’s why the CAGW team are so deathly scared of skeptics speaking in public. The boat is sinking, everyone knows it, but more than half the passengers don’t want to rock it, so they keep their skepticism quiet.

Surveys are darn hard to form correctly at the best of times. If one mixes in a large helping of climate alarmism agenda setting and you have a recipe for an awful survey.

What should have been done is the scientists behind this should have handed it off to an organization that specializes in running professional unbiased surveys; marketing agencies usually have a good handle on how to do this. But given what they know is the situation in the field, it would be professional suicide, it will never happen; so we are bound to keep having these half arsed surveys until they run out of money..

Only one thing is certain, geoscientists and scientists won’t be asked their opinion again if it can be avoided.

To their surprise and dismay researchers found that the majority of geo-scientists and engineers in a survey are skeptical about dangerous man made global warming. Which is a similar result of two recent surveys of meteorologists. So then they tried to explain it away by pointing out:

- those who work in fossil fuel industries are opposed to carbon regulation “for obvious reasons”. But they never mention any vested interest climate scientists may have who will be out of a job once the funding stops!

- they tend to be older, male and more conservative, (not smart young female activists!)

- they do not accept public interest and economic responsibility as do the Insurance and re-insurance industries and even the military who are concerned about security risks, failed states and terrorism, (not an excuse for those to bolster premiums, profits or defence spending?)

How much more deliberately naive and biased could they have been?

Their paper had grand canyon sized logic holes in it yet it passed peer review for publication. Why could they not just admit that there are a lot of knowledgeable, technically minded people who have not been convinced with the wishy washy half baked and fluctuating evidence they have been given of the so called settled science of climate change?

Another old, conservative, male mechanical engineer here. I’ve been working with heat engines my entire career. I am old enough to remember 1972 when the UN became involved in misunderstanding the role of anthropogenic forcings in the coming ice age. I come from the same place as Maurice Strong, and have always loathed the Communist influence of his entire family. I am old enough to remember cringing when he became involved in the UN environmental corps. Lord knows, he had done plenty to screw up the petroleum industry in Canada as head of the leftist PetroCanada. I have always smelled a rat in this scam. I have often said “I am no skeptic, since skepticism implies some doubt, and I have understood that it is rotten to the core from the beginning”. (I am also aware that under normal circumstances, skepticism is a good thing)
I have often been curious as to how one would become a “climate scientist”. I am well aware that a thorough understanding of all the mechanisms involved, such as mathmatics, statistical analysis, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, geology, astrophysics, etc that it would take a lifetime to earn the degree, if there were one. So far as I am aware, the only University that offers such a degree is the University of East Anglia, and the syllabus for that prepares on to be an activist, with little or no instruction in the above disciplines. Nevertheless, Communist agitators, such as Anna Rose and her husband, will only discuss with “climate scientists”. I suppose that is reason enough for them to be as ignorant as they are.

Me to I am not middle aged I am old aged but I am still an engineer and I find no real science or logic in AGW, just political manipulation. Total crock that needs a serious fixing before they manipulate our civilization back to the stone age.

I’ve noticed JG is getting around with heavy-framed glasses these days, where only a year ago there was no eye-wear in prime-ministerial usage at all that I can recall.
I’ve wondered if she’s going for the mature look, the engineer look, or the hipster look.

The engineer look could be to convince people she knows what she’s talking about and her plans will work.
The mature look could be simply out of sympathy for Bob Carr so he doesn’t feel bad about taking orders from someone “young and naive”.
But my money’s on the hipster look.

I’m a mechanical engineer, B.Sc. (Eng) Hons. I am a sceptic and a proud one. Most engineers I know are of the same opinion and none of us is connected in any way whatsoever with any energy industry.
Malta

AAP churns them out daily…note it is AAP’s claims surrounding the Foreign Minister’s quote.

so who at AAP has the scientific credentials to make these claims?

11 Feb: Age: AAP: Aust helps Kiribati on climate change
Australia will give $15 million to the Pacific island nation of Kiribati towards the cost of rebuilding a main road damaged by rising sea levels.
Foreign Minister Bob Carr who is visiting Kiribati says fixing the road will ensure people can get to schools health clinics and markets.
“Kiribati is at the front line of climate change,” Senator Carr said in a statement on Monday, adding its highest point is now just three metres above sea level.
Without help in the fight against climate change, Kiribati could be uninhabitable by 2030…http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/aust-helps-kiribati-on-climate-change-20130211-2e75b.html

No Kinky if its St Bob O’Brookes you mean he needs it all for his lovely air conditioning…the Eco who is happy to have me freeze to friggin death because of Eco-energy surcharges but saysup above(!) how he cannot contemplate living without air conditioning.

Put me down as a geologist and a sceptic.
Not rusted on though – I will look at any evidence anyone has to offer.

But looking at the geological record and see nothing unusual happening now.
Times with high atmospheric CO2 in the past appear to have been bumper times for the biosphere.

What scares me is that a “consensus” of economists didn’t see the financial crisis coming and still dont seem to be aware of the trajectory the global economy is heading on. Now there is a problem for future generations. I think the “Greens” may very well get their wish for a colapse in capitalism.

HuffPo: Richard Schiffman
Richard Schiffman is the author of two books and is a poet based in New York City, as well as a former freelance journalist. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Salon.com, The Christian Science Monitor and leading literary journals. His radio stories have been heard on “Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered,” Weekend Edition and Monitor Radio. His “Spiritual Poetry Portal” can be found here. .http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-schiffman/

btw it seems like half of ABC radio programs at nite are the kind of stuff this guy would appear on.

But, much clearer than the defunct science of Kremlinology, the message is clear, despite the language and prejudices. Experienced decision-makers are more skeptical than those who are not; and those who are closer to the science (but not dependent on climatology for their livelihoods) are more skeptical than those who are more distantly removed.

(CNSNews.com) – A federal advisory committee appointed by the Obama administration to produce a report on climate change says that if Earth’s climate were still “primarily controlled by natural factors”—rather than by man-made global warming—then the next ice age would occur within the next 1,500 years.

But now, because of humans, the committee says, the next ice age has been “delayed indefinitely.”

When the precession of the Earth’s axis sets us up and when we are on the far reaches of the orbit around the sun we are going to chill out.

The entire Earth’s population, like the Neanderthals did, will move for a 100,000 year vacation in the tropical zones. It will get crowded and I hope to Gaia that Bob Brown does not move in next to me;

Tasmania is going to freeze its butt off and there will be no more Greenie caused bush fires there.

Of course the other scenario likely is that the Arctic will start to accumulate again, yes ice, and New York will once again be under almost a one mile deep ice field and Antarctica will be relatively the same.

When we come out of it we could also find that the Antarctic is free from much of the ice and snow that now covers it and we will be able to explore whether it was inhabited in the past.

Dunno about that KK. There’s the distinct possibility that a world-wide breakdown of order will come with it. I don’t think it will be at all pretty. The current Oz problem of illegal immigrants will pale into utter insignificance.

Just a few years ago there was a programme on SBS (of all places!) about Greenland during the MWP and when the LIA hit. Written accounts from the time mention the shocking rapidity of the descent into the LIA. Within a few years around 1400, places where some sort of agrarian had existed for a couple of centuries were uninhabitable. Settlements became ice-bound so quickly that boat rescue was impossible and many were simply abandoned to their fate. Those who couldn’t get out had the choice of integrating themselves into the local Inuit people or perishing – as many did.

Interesting, certainly. East side at least, a reliable water supply, provided we can overcome the demonising of containments. Not all “food bowl” potential of course, large tracts of old alluvial. Decent cyclone (or spent cyclone) and it all gets trashed. It only has to rain a bit and the Bruce Highway is closed for days.

Many countries with far less potential have done wonders with that sort of water supply.

Australia is odd really. Because of its historical development a lot of agriculture is carried out in very marginal areas. Areas with highly variable water supply.

Maybe it is time that we realised that a consistent water supply is really quite desirable for sustained agricultural development, and start looking at areas that can provide that consistencey of water supply.

The US military is concerned about security risks associated with ‘population displacements, increased potential for failed states and terrorism, potential escalation of conflicts over resources’ (Nagel, 2011, p. 206).

One wonders how much Nagel was paid, in 2011, for that little gem?

Anybody who has a military background, will tell you that all significant wars, with the possible exception of the Crusades, have been about resources. So where is the revelation?

Thank you Jo, but will these facts make the front pages, or be lead stories in the nightly TV News. Probably not, but the “Media” needs a series of solid kicks until ALL the facts are presented, not just emotive warmism.

Journalists no longer conduct interviews and ask penetrating questions that are designed to expose the truth at the real heart of the matter. In fact, they even have trouble finding somebody to have coffee with, let alone conduct an interview with.

Instead, they simply rephrase the press releases produced by the spin merchants to better align with the average reading age for their market segment. Depending on segment, they may include a picture of steam rising from a cooling tower, or they may include a picture of a hot-rod burning rubber, or even a picture of a young woman in a bikini, holding an umberella to keep the nasty CO2 pollution at bay.

And that is how the news is done.

Now what was it you wanted? Oh yes, “facts”. Hmm, tricky things, facts — tend to get away on you, if you’re not careful. Much safer leaving them alone.

Sceptics tend to be those people who work with the real world and not just a theoretical one. The older you get, the more of the real world you experience. Wisdom makes you apreciate the world you’ve got and stops you chasing blindly after an impossible utopia.

You raise a good point however i question what is the true definition of a sceptic, to me a sceptic must be consistent across all aspects of life for one to be a true sceptic then they must not pick and choose what they are sceptical about.

For example one cannot be a sceptic of global warming by claiming a lack of evidence to support the theory but then believe in God they must be sceptical on both issues. I suggest most people who claim to be sceptical regarding AGW are not true sceptics because they will hold beliefs in other areas.

Take the latest effort by Dr Karl he claims to be a scientist and after smearing A Bolt re no warming in 16 years he gets the warming trend wrong by a factor of 10 when this is pointed out his response was to delete his twitter comments and go into hiding obviously he is not a sceptic but would proudly pronounce his atheism due to a lack of evidence (just a guess on my part it is possible be is a deeply religious man) but you get my point.

I doubt many of us could apply the same level of scepticism we have towards AGW to any all other subjects due to our very own belief systems.

I think i know where you are going with this, as the only evidence to suggest a deity exists is in anecdotal scribblings from over 2,000 years ago any sceptic worth his salt would have to say “there is no God” therefore anyone who believes in God must be labelled a denier.

After reading these scribblings the denier would have to accept that his God created the planet for him, yes sure the deity wrote a few lines on how to treat fellow deniers but there are no rules on how to treat the planet provided by the deity which infers it as open slather. Hence your conclusion that the coal and gas etc was put there by said deity for the denier to use.

So now we have a situation where a bunch of deniers are using the planets resources as they see fit (on instruction from the deity) but along comes another bunch of deniers who claim the anecdotal scribblings have been misinterpreted and the deity created the planet for all the creatures the deity originally created.

I doubt many of us could apply the same level of scepticism we have towards AGW to any all other subjects due to our very own belief systems.

Now, why would you think that? Does scepticism exist on a scale? How would you define the end-points? Or perhaps there are no end-points, and the scale is circular, so that if you are sceptical enough, you suddenly become an evangelical believer? Is that what an epiphany is? I am sceptical that any of these questions can be answered rationally, so why bother having the conversation in the first place?

Firstly what is scepticism? Lets define the definition before we go any further

From the Oxford dictionary

a person who habitually doubts the authenticity of accepted beliefs
a person who mistrusts people, ideas, etc, in general
a person who doubts the truth of religion, esp Christianity

I think the first definition is most relevant here would you agree?

To answer your questions

1, Re scale no that is the point i am making there is no scale.

2, End points, as there is no scale there are no end points

If you see no reason in having this conversation then why do you consistenly question others beliefs? On what grounds do you claim to be a sceptic?

Once again the definition a person who habitually doubts the authenticity of accepted beliefs ok so an accepted belief is AGW is an accepted fact (science is settled) another accepted belief is that there is a deity therefore to be sceptical you must doubt both but how many do?

You (anyone) cannot sit and say on the balance of evidence i reject AGW but i will ignore all evidence on another issue because i wish to believe in that issue. A good example is Sonny (sorry) but he rejects AGW claims to be sceptical but he believes in chemical spraying in the jetstreams even though he has no evidence to support that claim but many people are like Sonny a true sceptic would have to reject both.

But then you dont feel this conversation is worth having, possibly you dont want to expose your own beliefs?

I tip my hat to you. That is an excellent attempt at demolition of my previous comment, but …

It was your mention of “levels of sceptism” that induced me to ask if there was a scale. From that point on, all of my comment consisted of additional questions in qualification of that.

But, to answer your questions, yes I do think the first or your definitions is the most relevant. I do not mistrust people or ideas in general, I only mistrust conclusions that are not based on demonstrable fact. I do not doubt religion, as a valuable moral system, except that I prefer to think of it in terms of philosophy, rather than terms of theology.

So all you prove is that ‘sceptic’ doesn’t fit any better than ‘denier’, which only indicates that we haven’t got a PR team inventing a new word to describe us. The other side has an equally difficult task because ‘believer’ hints at faith rather than fact. They tried to get ‘climate hawks’ accepted but it was just too silly to take hold. ‘Climate cynics’ might be a more accurate term for us but since people know who and what ‘climate sceptics’ are it seems a waste of time to try and reinvent things.

Language changes, and words mean what they mean when they’re used in common speech. Eventually the dictionaries catch up eg gay.

For me, scepticism means I don’t accept things until there is a good body of evidence to support the issue (assuming I care one way or the other). This means I don’t have to be generally sceptical of those areas of science or technology with a proven track record of accuracy, but I don’t necessarily take important issues on trust just because it comes from a trusted source. Even good people and organisations make mistakes.

You also seem to assume that scepticism/cynicism has to be absolute for all things, but who could or wants to meet such an extreme? Everyone has their foibles.

It is not a challenge many will take up, let me expand on this subject a little i know someone who claims to be a sceptic towards the theory of AGW they can quote all the usual taking points (Co2 lags temp, 16 years of no warming etc) so in other words when presented with the evidence on balance they say AGW theory is false(sified) but they also believe man did not land on the moon. They can show you a whole range of evidence like shadows where there shouldn’t be, no shadows where there should be, wind and flags etc but there is one piece of evidence that they wont show and that is the astronauts put laser reflectors on the moon surface so we can accurately measure the distance between the moon and earth. These reflectors are still in use today, however when confronted with this evidence they deny/ignore this and continue to maintain their beliefs in other words they are not a sceptic. You cannot have your cake and eat it also.

We all know someone who acts out of keeping with their stated opinion and general wisdom.

I know someone who is passionate about AGW but who lives in a huge draughty house, compounded by almost permanently open windows and boiling central heating. She flies internationally to see family on four continents and drives an SUV. She was a friend, until I told her that rather than worry about the future of her grandchildren and AGW she should spend a fraction of her money on fixing the conservatory roof that leaked onto criminally bad, old wiring that took out fuses on a daily basis or she wouldn’t have children to worry about much longer. And she was a doctor.

I have a low opinion of the loud Dr Karl. He has a surface knowledge of quite a lot of stuff, possibly a bit more than our average high school leaver.
I’ve probably told this story before, but it illustrates my point. Quite a few years ago I had a barny with him on a live-to-air talkback radio program (3RRR) when he claimed that black was a colour.
When I challenged him how an absence of photons could be any form of light, it was a case of “Well it is! Next caller, quick!”

An interesting concept Crakar24, but difficult to measure scepticism for either God or AGW. Personally I’m agnostic for CAGW and god. I don’t see much evidence for either but I can’t entirely rule them out.

How many people actually believe in God (or AGW) and how many just quite like the concept? I suspect that bulk of the UK population are now atheist/agnostics, even if they still tick the Christian box on the census. The meagre numbers going to church would suggest that any faith people do have is… flexible. I suspect that a large part of the remaining desire to cling to religion is a fear that life stops when you die and not a desire to meet their maker. We’re a sceptical people or one might say cynical. We invented the Church of England or Catholicism Lite. Perhaps it also explains why, despite one the heaviest AGW campaigns in the world, we’re slowly drifting away from it. Or maybe we’re just lazy and while we leap up with excitement at first, we lose interest when we realise it’s going to involve hardship?

Are climate sceptics more likely or less likely to believe in God than non sceptics? Are they more or less likely to believe in other faith based concepts? I suspect you’d get a higher Christian to Pagan ratio for sceptics than for environmentalists. Lewandowski was on to an interesting idea when he sought to find out if sceptics were more likely to believe in conspiracy theories than warmists but due to his bias he completely bodged his research. Even if you accept his daft study, what he did prove was that sceptics are less likely to believe in conspiracies than the general population.

Of course a large number of active sceptics are white American, a group with a far higher active church going population that either the UK or Australia. This may skew any online measurement of sceptic/religious sentiment.

A man offers to sell Craker a bridge. Because Craker maintains as he says here that to be a sceptic you must be sceptical of all things and he is sceptical of the bridge offer he must…by his own “logic” therefore also be sceptical of AGW.

Crakers “reasoning” is that of a three yerar old. His “logic” is non-existent. By his criterion, he either believes everything or believes nothing. What a friggin idiot.

He also supports and believes everything he is told by proponents of genocide, the abuse and chattel oewnership of women, the forcible marriage of children and the elimination of Western style democracy.

When he opens his gaping air-head on the topic of God you know you are in the presence of a truly unique fool. I am not going to wastetime on an idiot, it would be like trying to discuss the difference in emotional content between Bach and Mozart with someone who is tone deaf.

Everyone else who responded to my question responded in good faith, if they disagreed with my comment they gave a well reasoned explanation as to why, i even gave MattB a thumbs up because i thought his comment was a very good one. Due to the responses that i received i have now re evaluated my position and concede that my interpretation of the term sceptic my have been a little too strict and have adjusted my thinking slightly on this topic.

Your comment to be blunt is pure shit, your bridge analogy makes no sense i doubt even a 3 year old could understand the point you are trying to make. You then proceed to denigrate me in a variety of ways which only go to bolster my point of view. Your beliefs in the points you raise are written in such a way that it is obvious that no matter what evidence if indeed such evidence exists were presented to you you would not have the ability nor the capacity to view said evidence with an open mind therefore you are not of a sceptical mind.

Ergo if your mind is closed to such matters then it is highly probable that your mind is closed to new evidnce regarding AGW therefore you Ace are a true denier.

For some reason you are either very anti American , anti Jewish or very pro Muslim and we don’t know why you feel that way.

You accuse us of “Not seeing the whole picture” and that might be your view.

Just to offer a little balance about my own view on things I would like to say that there are many wonderful people in all true religions and I mean all.

More than not, these wonderful people are governed and manipulated by entities posing as government which do real harm to people.

Look at the American financial system which ripped the heart out of middle America and also stole from the rest of the world; an appalling act of betrayal.

Look at the damage done to the Muslim faith by Jihadists who’s only remedy for issues is to demolish other states and kill people.

Our own lack of government here in Australia has cause untold hardship for the whole country as well as closer to home for my family and I.

There is also ongoing neglect of the core issues for Aboriginals in their quest to reach a point where they can feel good about themselves. Social security has caused them so much damage and is a form of genocide.

Sometimes our lives are so hard that there are no answers.

As for other religions, this man is an example of amazing faith in humanity and I feel that by not fixing the corruption in our own thinking and in our own government, maybe we will have failed him too.

We who is we? Have you lot taken a secret poll? If you had of actually read any of my comments in recent times you will understand just how silly your comment above is.

What i am talking about can be summed up in one word “consistency” we need to be consistent in our thinking, JB and others suggest some sceptics are not consistent in their appraisal of the evidence towards AGW and at some level i would agree. My comments from a few days ago and recent ones today are all about how consistent we are or not in some cases.

Your comment above and also the comment by Ace makes various unsubstantiated accusations (Ad homs) but does not address the issue i am wishing to discuss this is the type of behaviour you yourself accuse AGW believers of (consistency).

I am not interested in addressing any of your statements unrelated to the topic at hand simply because this is not the correct forum to discuss them, feel free to contact Jo for my email and we can discuss this issue in more detail off line if you wish.

For the record,

I am not anti American in that i do not hate Americans i have in fact worked with many of them in 3 different countries in both aeronautical and telephony fields and found them all to be very nice people. I do not like some of the policies by their successive governments but that is not their fault as much as it is not our fault Gillard brought in a carbon dioxide tax.

I am not anti Jewish (similar to above) i do not wish to boycott a Jewish coffee shop in inner Melbourne unlike the Greens.

I am not very pro muslim although there are different levels of islamic ways of living unlike Christianity, Sharia law is their version of dictatorship Saudi Arabia is a perfect place to see Sharia law in action, more moderate versions can be seen in Jordan, Iran and Turkey for example these moderate versions still have flaws just like ours.

I dont have comment numbers so i dont know which is 25.1.7.1.1. so if you want me to respond you will have to give a bit more detail. However in general we were discussing what is a sceptic, how do we define ourselves as sceptics, should we be sceptical about every issue or only those that we choose to be. Everyone else responded to those questions however Ace digressed into other topics that Jo would prefer not discussed. It is at this point that i made the “good faith” comment which was directed squarely at Ace so i am a little bemused as to why you think you are included in this claim.

Are you trying to make it look like everyone except Ace is acting in good faith so that you can attack him.

KK, look back through the previous comments since i spoke to Andy G yesterday (no numbers) add up all the comments that relate to the topic then add up all the comments that dont, look read all the comments and see if you can identify any comments that make accusations of me supporting genocide, enslavery of women, forced childhood marriage and removal of democracy. Once you have found the only comment which makes these accusations take note of the authors name and then ask yourself if this person is acting in good faith? Then read my response and ask yourself was he attacked?

There isn’t much point “discussing this privately” because this whole thing seems to have blown up because others were accused of “not seeing things too clearly”.

Did i say that? “not seeing things too clearly” nevermind the point is that if you wished to discuss your latest guesstimation of my beliefs we could do that but not here. I gave you the option, you are not obligated to take up that option but until you do this type of crap is well just crap

For some reason you are either very anti American , anti Jewish or very pro Muslim and we don’t know why you feel that way.

Every day I ask myself if I am seeing things clearly, without blinkers, without being mislead by propaganda. I find that I enjoy exchanging ideas and filling in the gaps in my understanding of things.

You could start by learning the legal definition of “international waters”, i also expect you have found this to be an enjoyable experience.

The “for the record” comment could have been written by me; but it just makes your previous comments on earlier posts that much harder to place in context.

KK, i think it boils down to one thing you and i and i suspect others just have a different view of what is right and wrong in certain circumstances but as i have said you have the option take it or leave it matters none to me.

The concept of Scepticism implies perhaps, being on the alert all the time where I prefer to take most things at face value unless provoked to examine them more closely.

and probably defines the difference in our thinking and goes a long way to clarify my original point. If one was to take something at face value then are they sceptical? Can someone be sceptical on one issue but not another?

If one where to accept the facts surrounding an issue on face value do they then have a right to make assumptions about one who has studied the same issue in depth? Obviously not, so i hope at least i have provoked you to examine these issues more closely.

❝ Dr Gillespie said the weather event that had caused wide-spread flooding and heavy rain throughout Queensland and regions of NSW had also caused flooding and displaced people in Jakarta, Indonesia. ❞

There is absolutely NO evidence that ex cyclone Oswald, which tracked south along the east coast of Australia, caused flooding in Jakarta.

This is especially true for causes that are out of sight in another country where money rarely reaches the target.

We would all be doing more for the down-trodden if we insisted that the UN turf out despotic vicious governments and Warlords and install transparent ( if there is such a thing) management of these dysfunctional states.

Of course it is a prerequisite that the UN undergo a radical upheaval itself to remove all of the parasitic life forms that currently soak up all of the funding on their own lifestyle.

Excellent Jo except you slipped up on the last part. Sure they need to go back…to kindergarten, learn to tie their shoe-laces, wipe their arse, stop dribling over milk break, pass puberty, learn yo shave (their legs) then maybe acknowldge they aint necessarily as bright as the other kids who did all that before they were fifty.

So we all know that when “climate change deniers” is said, they mean you guys.

And you are particularly easy to identify. If you go to Tamino, or Skeptical Science, and make a comment, however hard you try to sound reasonable, the denizens of those blogs spot you as “climate change deniers” straight away.

And by the way, “climate change deniers” is just shorthand for “people who prefer not to believe that human actions are significantly contributing to the current bout of global warming”. The key word there is “prefer”.

Exactly John, so you admit there is no justification (in good English or science) for calling us deniers, it doesn’t accurate describe what is going on, but it’s a useful term of derision for a team that can’t win a polite debate?

I always refer to your side of the fence as fake skeptics (or “skeptics” for short). That is, while extremely skeptical of Mann, Hansen, Jone etc, you don’t extend your skepticism to people like Monckton, Plimer, Salby et al.

And I might say that a lot of greenies are just the same, but on the other side of the fence. They are not skeptical enough of the people on their side, instinctively believing any environmental fad.

So we all know that when “climate change deniers” is said, they mean you guys.

I didn’t know that! I didn’t know that whenever somebody says “climate change deniers” they are talking about me. I live in New Zealand, the land were we can get four seasons in one day. Nobody in this country has any doubt that climate changes. We often wish it wouldn’t. So how come they mean us guys? Sounds racist to me.

Did you see when they asked Sam Kekovitch if there was any difference between Australian and New Zealand lamb? He said something to the effect of, “Well ours is only used for eating. You should have thought a bit more before you asked that question.”

‘And by the way, “climate change deniers” is just shorthand for “people who prefer not to believe that human actions are significantly contributing to the current bout of global warming”. The key word there is “prefer”.’

So you believe that we irrationally adjust our beliefs to fit our desires rather than following evidence and reasons.

John,
The evidence that the AGW pseudo scientists never correctly modeled the role of radiative gases in tropospheric convective circulation cannot be erased from the Internet. This sorry hoax is all but over, and soon it will be Whacking Day. I love the use of terms like “denier”, “big oil shill” and “flat earther”. They make those web searches to identify the guilty oh so easy. This does not end with the collapse of the hoax. There will be further two decades of pain for the warmists. Whenever they try to crawl back into positions of social or political influence the filthy stain of their AGW advocacy will be retrieved from the web at the click of a mouse. Sceptics will never forgive and the internet will never forget.

I’m sorry John? You actually have evidence that AGW that the AGW pseudo scientists correctly modeled the role of radiative gases in convective circulation below the tropopause? Or are you just full of it?

You see I have empirical experiments that show that most of the net energy flux atmospheric gases radiate to space is acquired from conductive surface contact and release of latent heat. I have empirical experiments to show how important the hight of cooling is to convective circulation and average temperature in a gas column. I have empirical experiments showing that a lower surface Tmin under a non radiative atmosphere will not lead to lower atmospheric temperatures.

How many empirical experiments have you got to prove AGW? None. None at all. This hoax will not end with a soft landing for any of the fellow travelers. Radiative gases have a net cooling effect at all concentrations above 0.0ppm. Adding radiative gases to the atmosphere will not reduce the atmospheres radiative cooling ability.

You see Konrad, I have no idea what you even mean. But its almost certain that you are wrong

Given that you appear to be saying that some accepted science is not correct, you actually need to give details of the experiments to which prove your point. If they are good experiments, they’ll be in a proper journal. But I’ll cut you some slack, even a comprehensive blog post on WTFUWT will do – provided it hasn’t been thoroughly shredded.

“You see Konrad, I have no idea what you even mean. But its almost certain that you are wrong”

That ones a keeper John! You don’t understand but you’re almost certain I’m wrong? Priceless! Let me guess, you don’t understand radiative physics by you’re almost certain the pseudo scientists are correct? What convinced you, white lab coats, they sounded “sciency” or was it perhaps just that you agreed with their politics?

“Given that you appear to be saying that some accepted science is not correct, you actually need to give details of the experiments to which prove your point.”

“ If they are good experiments, they’ll be in a proper journal. But I’ll cut you some slack, even a comprehensive blog post on WTFUWT will do – provided it hasn’t been thoroughly shredded.”

Actually I have been having a lot of fun at JC, Talkshop and WUWT. There has been some thorough shredding, but not the way you might hope John. The arguments of warmists Joel Shore, Nick Stokes, Josh Halpern and Jim_D and Mike Tuppen have all been shredded. “Do not engage” is their new policy. Especially after it was revealed that the first four knew of the problem with the radiative GHE modelling for years ago and tried to trash the M2010 discussion paper in another science discipline to hide the issue.

The AGW pseudo scientists did not properly model the critical role of radiative gases in convective circulation in the troposphere. The evidence of the flawed modelling cannot be erased from the Internet. Nor can the evidence than some of the defenders of the AGW hoax have know they were wrong for years.

Konrad, I’m going to start using “pre-Copernican obscurantist” to describe people who don’t believe observations, experiments or data, and always find a way to derail the argument. It’s such a wonderful Paul Keatingism. So add that to your search terms.

I am always amused by the efforts of these hapless Alarmists rushing around trying to “explain” the actions of skeptics.

They will never find the answer.

Because the true answer is one that Alarmists cannot countenance in any shape or form whatever, that is, that skeptics are people very like them, who care about the environment, who care about their children and their children’s children, but who happen to take a different view as to the strength of the scientific findings and to the policy prescriptions being proposed by politicians and bureaucrats.

So, to those Alarmists trying to “explain” skeptics, here’s the answer. There is nothing to explain.

“Most Geoscientists and Engineers are Global Warming skeptics” is a pretty bloody misleading headline, don’t you think? Given what the paper actually surveys is a group of professionals from Alberta, Canada, who appear to be predominantly employed in oil and gas?

Matt, haven’t you learned to stop reading the source material? Just trust what you’re told. “Most employees of the world’s most toxic polluting industry don’t want to think about the consequences of their actions” might have been more accurate, but doesn’t fit the paradigm that exists on this site.

I’ve heard it called the Sir Humphrey defence, which works in four phases. “There’s no problem. Well, there might be a problem, but we don’t know what it is. Okay, there’s a problem, but we can’t do anything about it. Oops, there was a problem but it’s too late to do anything about it now.”

every CAGW idea is based on extrapolation from an unrealistic meme. !!

we don’t just look at, say, the Arctic, and totally ignore the Antarctic.

we don’t just look at, say, 4 hot days in central Australia and ignore metres deep snow elsewhere in the world.

we don’t look at one relatively minor storm on the coast of USA and ignore the general downward trend of storms and hurricanes worldwide

we don’t look at one short 20ish year period from 1970′s to 1998 when CO2 and temp just happened to be going the same direction, and ignore the MWP, RWP, the unadjusted late 1930′s etc and the period after 1998.

Andy, you should realise that temperature and precipitation are different measures. Higher temperatures = greater ability of the air to hold moisture = greater precipitation.

Which minor storm in the US are you referring to? Hurricane Sandy, which killed 253 people and caused around $80bn in damages (the most destructive hurricane ever to hit the US not called Katrina), or the blizzard which just swept across the US, dumping up to a metre of snow?

There’s no need to ignore the last 14 years of data. Temperatures are still rising. 2010 was the hottest year on record and 2012 was the hottest La Nina year on record. Also, the January heat wave in Australia was seven days in a row of national average temps above 39C. The average daily maximum across the country – that’s average, across all 31 days – was 36.92C, 0.11C above the previous record. So it wasn’t just “4 hot days in central Australia”.

Andy!!!G55!!! I’m not sure you’ve heard of a Stevenson screen? It’s the gold standard for temperature measurements. The BoM invalidated a lot of the 19th century temperature ‘records’ because they weren’t recorded using these standardised instruments.

You won’t get a sensible answer to that one Ricardo. In fact about the only thing the denizens agree on is that AGW is totally and absolutely wrong. On everything else, including the reasons why AGW is totally and absolutely wrong, there is widespread disagreement.

And lets face it, these guys weren’t born yesterday! They know that if they say, for example, that 25 years of warming will prove things, then you’ll be able to say, “See you said you’d be convinced, but now you’ve shown yourself to be a denier”. Anthony Watts made that mistake when he trusted Richard Muller. Wiser “skeptics” warned him, but Anthony didn’t listen. And he’s still trying to get the egg off his face.

Sandy hit one of the biggest cities in the world. But how do these people get away with implying it was anything like the worst storm to hit the region? Sandy was very big in area, maybe that’s what they’re referring to. But really! Irene at least was a Cat 1 at landfall.

Those who don’t learn from the past! NY has a long history of hurricanes. Being close to sea level and having the mouth of the Hudson artificially narrowed (was that Bloomberg and mates?) are things which don’t help. If there is a repeat of the 1635, 1821, 1869, 1893 or 1938 hurricanes, or a year of serial storms like 1954, what will these people do? Will Bloomberg blame global warming when he forgets the bottled water?

As for blizzards, what if there’s a repeat of 1888? Know about that one, hipsters?

The New Man at Year Zero trying to achieve doctrinal purity and hold back the forces of Koch may find all this juggling of use or interest. The rest of us need to batten down the hatches. Gaia is not your mummy, and she was nobody’s mummy when the Great Colonial Hurricane hit three and a half centuries back.

Cyclone Yasi was a real brute of a hurricane. But Mahina in 1899 was the biggest brute of all as far as Oz is concerned. Are we going to prepare for bad weather…or a we just going to leave trillions as temple offerings for this phony climate priesthood?

I’m not sure you’ve heard of a Stevenson screen? It’s the gold standard for temperature measurements.

Is it really? I challenge you to take one out in the hot sun, lets say Lightning Ridge in the middle of summer, nice and hot – 45C+ (make sure you put it next to the aerodrome), then put another one in the shade, away from heat sources.

Then look at the difference in temperature readings. Its all unspeakably dumb. These things are as accurate as guessing what the real temperature is, simply because of the stupid way they are used. A box sitting out in the sun will always be hotter than it actually is, particularly on a really hot day. Ever heard of a heat sink?

All the purple pointers on this map, and some of the dark blues, represent winds above hurricane strength. So your comment that “Sandy was NOT a hurricane when it hit lans” isn’t just badly spelled, it’s wrong.

Sandy was huge in area, some very big winds, came in on the wrong tide to the wrong place (with the wrong mayor). Attempting to enlist it into the catalogue of proofs of CAGW is as sophisticated at talking generally about “all this stuff that’s been happening to the weather lately”. “All this stuff” used to be caused by sin, A bombs, sputniks etc. Now it’s back to sin, of a peculiar sort.

It is impossible NOT to have serious hurricanes. Yasi, Mitch and other recent cyclones have been terrifying in force. An absence of extreme weather events would indeed be a form of Climate Change. Australia’s own Cyclone Mahina of 1899 and the annihilaton of Galveston the year following should have educated us about preparedness in the face of natural disaster. (That’s if our hipsterism won’t allow us to look back at the Great Hurricane of 1780 to help our understanding of what Atlantic weather can do.)

As to the Pacific, if a Typhoon Tip (305 km/h, 870 mbar!) ever arrives in the wrong place on the wrong tide, we’ll wish that money flushed through the UN, GIM and Goldman Sachs was spent on preparing for the common and perennial enemies of mankind, not on trough-swillers and their empty pieties.

There comes a time in everyone’s blogging life when they do something stupid; like not getting enough sleep and letting the mind run amok, and forgetting to conceal your age; it happens.

So what are we to do with this, which seems to have stirred up a lot of , interest?

“Ever noticed that Jo Nova seems to be the only female on this site?”

Not sure why that comment was seen to be relevant, useful or wise but I can see you sliding down the hill, and getting mud all over yourself and its still raining and there are no hand holds, and you are out of control.

Dude.

Report back to base.

Tell them to get you a new ID so that you can try again.

I hear that there are actually computers that can have 9 lives.

Don’t see any reason why they can’t add on more.

And just to add more detail to refute your opinion I know of at least two females who posted here, Sherri recently and also my great Grandmother was here for a while, so there.

Also most women are not engineers so they tend not to be interested in this stuff but they are always welcome if they blog here.

And that’s not being racist, did I get the right category there?

I’m not much good on PC stuff.

Do you realise how good it is to have people like you to practice on?

It helps us all sharpen our debating skills at the right level for the others who need to be shown the light.

Eventually we will have enough voters Skeptical of AGW to have it a negative for any politician to speak about it in public.

““Most Geoscientists and Engineers are Global Warming skeptics” is a pretty bloody misleading headline, don’t you think? Given what the paper actually surveys is a group of professionals from Alberta, Canada, who appear to be predominantly employed in oil and gas?”

Ever asked yourself where geoscientists , which includes geologists, are most likely to work? How about in the resources industries? Then engineers are ubiquitous so it is highly likely that in any country, not just Alberta, many practitioners of both disciplines will be working in the resources industries which includes oil and gas.

All the resources industries are potential CO2 emitters, somewhere along the line, so if you are suggesting they, like climate alarmist scientists, are also thinking of their job security that should allow one to extrapolate the results of that study to world wide relevance.

I’m infinitely more concerned about getting enough fossil fuel to power my vehicles and enough natural gas to cook with. Bet you walk everywhere and eat raw witchetty grubs and native grasses. Grow up enjoy the great life the oil and gas barons give us and stop being a nervous, hypocritical,little troll.

This (YouTube video) is how the weather used to be … and the fashionable forecasts of doom.

Notice a younger Stephen Schneider trying to straddle the barbed-wire fence in his slacks, trying to be right, no matter what … and get it wrong. He argued that if the ice age comes, counter-measures such as spreading soot to make the ice melt again may not be the right thing as that would make sea levels rise, overlooking the obvious; that more ice means less water in the oceans and therefore lower sea levels.

Fossil fuel companies (Shell and BP) started the whole AGW scare in the late 1960s. The purpose was to sell North Sea natural gas rather than burn it at the wellhead (it was essentially worthless). To do this they created the CRU at UEA.

When researchers Lianne M. Lefsrud and Renate E. Meyer asked geoscientists and engineers (employed by the Canadian tar sands industry) their opinion (opinion) about global warming, they discovered that two thirds of them think that the current warming is mostly (not entirely) due to nature.
Of course, polls of scientists are not evidence about our climate. (So why is it even worth a mention?) But it is evidence that one of the main forms of argument “97% of climate scientists say man-made warming is real” is not just meaningless, but misleading”. (Correct. 99.8% of climate change/global warming related papers published since 1990 agree that the world is warming, unlike Ms Nova’s Skeptic’s Handbook which says clearly Temperatures Not Rising – since 2001 in the 2009 version, but since 2010 was the hottest year on record, the “temperature not rising” meme has retreated to 1997, the most severe El Nino year on record. Even then, dammit, 2010 was hotter.)
In science, expertise is the ability to make predictions that match what happens. Credibility is what happens after someone proves they can do that. (Correct. And the IPCC forecasts have been pretty good. See http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/03/1378431/contrary-to-contrarian-claims-ipcc-temperature-projections-have-been-exceptionally-accurate/ )
The one large survey was done by volunteers (and done twice) and they found 31,000 scientists who disagree with the six-member-committees of science associations. (The Oregon Petition was “signed” by, among others, Perry Mason the TV character, Spice Girl Gerri Halliwell, Michael J Fox and John Grisham, who writes pot-boiler legal novels.)

Glad you checked out the link, Dave. Many of your cohorts don’t seem to get that far.

However, is there any chance you might address the points I raised? The ‘temperate not rising’ meme has been discredited even without a breakthrough year. The vast majority of peer-reviewed science points to CO2 as the culprit. The forecasts are holding up. The ‘survey’ quoted by Ms Nova is as genuine as a $10 Hong Kong Rolex.

Sorry Dave, that looks like complimicated maffs to my teeny tiny pea-brain. Are you implying that all five temperature data sets are trending upwards?

And what’s your reason for picking different start dates for each series? If I was sceptical, I might suspect you were trying to muddy the waters. Play fair and use the same time frame for each series.

You’d have to say that this is an attempt to find what minimum period of time is needed for the long term trend to overwhelm short term fluctuations. You’d have to say about 20 years based on the data.

“…what minimum period of time is needed for the long term trend to overwhelm short term fluctuations.”

Pick a period, any period. Make sure it fits the script. Don’t worry about being wrong. Publish-or-Perish (now with gang review!) takes out the speculative junk every five or so years and replaces it with new speculative junk.

When the Arctic temps plunged after that last “disappearing ice” scare (late 50s) nobody was cracking the champers. When that lead to an increase in Arctic ice in the 70s there were actual complaints! Lamb and the CRU were pretty sure we were heading into some glaciation or something. Then there was a massive heatwave in 1976 centred on Britain, so the CRU decided we were heading into some big warming (due to waste heat, rather than CO2).

Climate “science” is best symbolised by a wind turbine: medieval technology inspired by medieval incuriosity and dogmatism. And, yes, that’s a little unfair to the Middle Ages.

The older models of wind turbines just drove you mad with the grinding and clanking noise. We still have a few out on the Macleay flood plain. Grind-grind, clank-clank.

Still, at least they had a serious function. They were there for need, not fetishism. They produced, they did not drain. Their construction and operation were not supported by massive temple offerings to a phony priesthood.

Clue: Look at the value after the +/- and compare it with the value preceding it e.g +0.127 +/-0.136 If the value after the the +/- is less than the value after it then you can say very little about a trend existing.

Thanks Grant. I’m not a statistician. I think you’re saying “if the leading number (0.116 rise since 1996 according to NASA GISS) is smaller than the margin of error (0.122 in this case) then there is no statistically-significant increase”. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Going to the source of the data http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/ I get very different values. The GISS Global Land-Ocean Temperature Index records a value of 0.32 above 1951-80 mean in 1996, AndyG55′s start date. In 2012, that’s 0.56. An increase of 0.24 in 16 years. I know Andy quoted 17 years, but this year’s data aren’t available yet, despite Christopher Monckton’s fuzzy thinking. That’s who you got the data from isn’t it, Andy? He’s the bloke who did a Gina Rinehart-sponsored lap of honour a couple of years back and said Australia really needed a courageous media outlet like Fox News.

Handjive, thanks for the link to Feynman’s lecture. I think you may have missed the point: the quote of mine you are quoting was a quote from Jo Nova – at the top of the page. Were you trying to shoot me down? If so, I reckon you’ve managed a case of friendly fire.

And I’m not sure what you’re trying to achieve with that link you provide to http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130205102159.htm
Are you aware that it discusses the very same study which Ms Nova is discussing in this thread? You seem to be using it to prove me wrong, but what you’ve actually done is provide a thoroughly different interpretation of the study to the one presented in the article we are (ostensibly) commenting on.
So, how are you going to respond the next time someone says “the climate hasn’t warmed since pick-a-date”?

1. Why mention the polls? Rick – when you can point me at all the times you’ve complained to the SMH, the Age, the Guardian etc (and Sks) in the comments that they keep referring to polls of scientists as if they mean something then I’ll think your question was genuine.

2. Any trend depends entirely on the start year and end. It’s been warming since the Little Ice Age and Cooling since the Holocene and you’ve found some 1990 papers saying it was warming? Congratulations.

G’day Jo, thanks for the response. At 2:42am, of all times. Either you’re working super-late or in another time zone.

1. The only poll I discussed was the Lefsrud/Meyer study, which asked Canadian oil and gas engineers their opinion of how much of the current warming was due to human influence. The study I mentioned was a survey of peer-reviewed papers published in scientific journals. They are not the same.

2. I agree that trends depends on start and end years picked. That’s why I asked one of the Andies to play fair with his temperature data, which used different ranges for different series. I’m unclear about the rest of your comment.

3. Following your advice, I just checked the IPCC projections. This quote is from http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html
“Since IPCC’s first report in 1990, assessed projections have suggested global average temperature increases between about 0.15°C and 0.3°C per decade for 1990 to 2005. This can now be compared with observed values of about 0.2°C per decade, strengthening confidence in near-term projections.” In contrast, your self-link refers to the very first IPCC report in 1990, when things were understandably less well understood.
IPCC AR4: “For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios. Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1°C per decade would be expected.”

4. I still don’t accept the Oregon petition is a scientific study. As you say yourself, “five billion people can sign a petition begging it to rain in Mumbai on Thursday, but that won’t make it happen”. Apologies if I’m not word-perfect, I’m plucking that out of my memory, but I hope you recognise it. As far as I know, and I don’t pretend to know everything, the signatures on the Oregon petition have not been vetted, and there has been no verification even of the 9,000 PhDs (which, I would think, would be relatively easy). Aside from Dr Gerri Halliwell and the others that stuck out like …
5. Before I say something else crude, I would like to apologise to you personally (as the only identifiable female on this blog) if you were offended by my previous T-shirt comment. I realise not everyone shares my sense of humour, and I know my mouth and fingers can get ahead of my brain.

I am one of the geoscientists (geologists) referenced in the paper. I have read the entire paper.

They make a number of very good points and observations. One aspect they do not touch upon – and which they cannot – is whether the anti-IPCC position of the 63% who are upper management dispute the IPCC conclusions because of greater scientific understanding or of greater self-interest (positional in the industry or economic or self-image as a “good” guy in society). The same, of course, goes for the pro-regulation types in the lower end of authority: do they rely on the IPCC because they have less ability to understand the scientific basis or because the IPCC stands for the morally “right” thing to do with which for self-identity issues they want to be part of.

As a technical insider, I would argue that the higher up people understand that in technical issues or projects that there are constantly three things that undermine certainty: the technical strength of the data, the understanding of the connectedness or the models involved, and the cost/benefit of outcome. Each of these is exaggerated as a rule because everyone assigns the benefit of doubt to the position that favours him (as explicitly supported by William James as a pragmatist, a philosophical position that is very much an engineering stance, let alone that of a businessman).

Technical data is often perceived by outsiders as very hard when in fact it is soft. Mann’s use of tree-ring data is a good example: the specific data of tree-ring width is correct only when you account properly for no-ring events and side-of-tree positions (I’ve measured some myself, so I have seen these issues). His use of some trees to represent all trees is an assumption that comes with some uncertainty, or “softeness”. His model of tree-ring width representing temperature change is clearly not hard as he was forced to delete certain data (the “nature trick”) to support other studies, and had to glue instrumental data for the post 1880 period because his near-term tree rings didn’t work at all. “Hard” is rarely hard when you look closely.

Expectation of outcome, that is what you get for what you put in, is very, very tricky to determine. If it weren’t, profit margins would be much higher than they are – in life, not just business. Experimentation would be called “industrial processes”. For global warming, what we perceive as a potential loss and what we must suffer (financial, loss of personal choice in activity) both have large uncertainty. In economic terms, we speak here of “return-on-investment”, or ROI. Projecting even 12 months forward is mostly wrong: ask any investment counsellor.

As I said, each of these aspects is less hard than one would think by the proponents, and pushed more positively than every reasonable because one enthusiasm builds on another. Each 15% optimism leads linearly (or more) to the next: only five components need to be involved to end up with 2.0X what you actually end up with. The responses to global warming already have this display: CO2 emissions are much greater than expected, the temperatures are lower than expected, alternative energy supplies are both insufficiently constant and more costly than expected, and environmental response more varied than expected (no mid-tropospheric hotspot, Antarctic growing rather than melting). Optimism (or pessimism, if you will) of identifying what counts, how it is going to change and the impact of those changes have uniformly, by observation, been suffered from the inate propensity to give the benefit of doubt to the position that supports one’s overall conclusion.

Skepticism doesn’t need to be backed by letters after one’s name. An experience of life and how things turn out relative to expectation is sufficient. The manager’s life experience is sufficient to understand this. No five-year plan in the history of the world has turned out as expected. The IPCC’s position on global warming initiatives is not exempt from this fact.

When you are young and your parents oppose what you are doing, you think they are sticks-in-the-mud who don’t want change and have no imagination. Some of that is true, but some of their opposition is because life has shown them that a lot of change involves unpleasant, unintended side effects, benefits less than anticipated and costs greater than survivable. Going slow and easy is safer AND better in the long run, even if frustrating. This is not a technical issue, it is an issue that addresses the human hubris that comes from believing we know more than we actually do.

What the IPCC has done and proposes to do does not pass the “sniff test” of experienced adults once it is investigated. You get an uneasy feeling that too many things have to line up, like the stars and the moon, for everything to end up as described. You don’t need to be a scientist to understand that. This is what I think a lot of technical people understand and grounds their skepticism: there is too much push for too much done too soon to avoid too much bad stuff much later.

Nice approach. I’d have put less probability on the “CO2 is the primary cause” factor, but that is because I’ve looked into that area in some detail. But it wouldn’t materially affect the analysis by changing that value.

I’d urge you to caution though. Bjorn Lomborg lost his job when applying this type of ALARA-style analysis to proposed climate mitigation. He’s not suffered too badly, but the left can be very vindictive about people who are seen to break ranks. He was flamed very badly when he came out with The Skeptical Environmentalist.

Alas, a scientist is first and foremost somebody who knows how much he/she does not know, and may never know – but moves forward nonetheless.

This means that anybody claiming, for example, to model climate or predict its future state is as much a scientist as the aphid having a suck on my Tahitian Lime tree.

So absurd is the pretension of these people, so scant their data, so risible their method. They treat poorly understood, if handy, observation sets like ENSO, PDO etc as is if they were buttons or levers on a child’s pretend spaceship console. They add various other “forcings” and “mechanisms” to their coloured array…and away they go!

Indeed, the null hypothesis was not adopted and this is truly disgraceful.

If Abbott wins both houses he will dismantle the tax and the klimatariat, but to achieve this monumental victory he should tell the people now that CO2 does not cause global warming to any appreciable degree.

I am one of these “Geoscientists” people are talking about. About 15 years ago I had no real opinion on the Anthropogenic Global Warming question. I wondered aloud to another Geoscientist if it might be so. He talked about the Medieval Warm Period (of which I was unaware) and the Little Ice Age (that I knew something about) and convinced me to look into the question, since I know how to research a technical subject.
What I found was stunning:
Periods of Cold and Warmth (much warmer than today) have occurred in the past, without SUV’s
These were not correlated with CO2 concentrations, at all.
Also, the supporters of AGW had done these:
Scientific Fraud on the scale of Piltdown Man.
Wholesale data manipulation.
Conspiracy to deceive.
Blatant data “cherry-picking”, sloppily concealed.
Character assassination of opponents.
Outright deception and untruths of major proportions.
Appeals to emotion.
Appeals to “consensus” when NO CONSENSUS EXISTS.
The “Man-Made-Global-Warming “argument is Absurd Nonsense and it is about time people said so!

The thing that “made me go look” was the claim that oceans were rising and by implication had ALWAYS been absolutely stable before.

From my one Geology subject at UNI I knew this to be false as we had been shown a local rock platform which had been exposed over the last few thousand years or so (3,000 – 4,000) when the oceans dropped 4 ft or about 1.2 meters.

Then I got into the CO2 thing and the corruption and ugliness was astounding.

Here we are in the “enlightened period” ha ha of 2013 and this mind bending delusion has penetrated society and been used to enslave them.

Just amazing and very very frustrating.

The list of culprits is too long but we need to demolish the UN and all associated appendages for a start.